Tag: Edward Snowden

All invited to open forum at Allard School of Law at University of British Columbia.

William Binney, NSA whistleblower

In the late 1990s William Binney, a top US National Security Agency (NSA) intelligence official, led the development of ThinThread, a sophisticated signals intelligence system with built-in encryption technology allowing the NSA to collect and analyze communications data without violating privacy laws. Around the time of the September 11 attacks, ThinThread was shelved in favour of the Trailblazer Project, a wasteful, inefficient alternative with no privacy protections.

Binney left the NSA and blew the whistle in an effort to hold the agency accountable for waste and corruption, as well as for illegal and unconstitutional spying on the US population. For doing so, he was harassed and undermined, and further development of his technologies was suppressed.

Today, he advocates worldwide for the adoption of “smart selection,” a disciplined, focused intelligence method that protects citizens’ privacy rights.

Hear Bill Binney speak at free noon-hour forum

Don’t miss this Thursday March 14, 2019 noon-hour event honouring legendary whistleblower William Binney – at Franklin Lew Forum, Allard Hall at the Peter A. Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia. (RSVP here)

An audience Q&A will follow Binney’s telling of his fascinating and troubling story of the surveillance state, individuals’ rights to privacy, and what it means to blow the whistle on a powerful government agency.

FBI Raid on William Binney’s home

After retiring from the NSA, Binney founded, together with fellow NSA whistleblower J. Kirk Wiebe, Entity Mapping, LLC, a private intelligence agency to market their analysis program to government agencies

In September 2002, Binney, along with J. Kirk Wiebe and Edward Loomis, asked the U.S. Defense Department Inspector General (DoD IG) to investigate the NSA for allegedly wasting “millions and millions of dollars” on Trailblazer, a system intended to analyze mass collection of data carried on communications networks such as the Internet.

Binney was one of several people investigated as part of an inquiry into a 2005 The New York Times exposé on the agency’s warrantless eavesdropping program. Binney was cleared of wrongdoing after three interviews with FBI agents beginning in March 2007, but in early July 2007, in an unannounced, armed, early morning raid, a dozen agents armed with rifles appeared at his house, one of whom entered the bathroom and pointed his gun at Binney, who was taking a shower.

The FBI confiscated a desktop computer, disks, and personal and business records. The NSA revoked his security clearance, forcing him to close a business he ran with former colleagues at a loss of a reported $300,000 in annual income. The FBI raided the homes of Wiebe and Loomis, as well as House Intelligence Committee staffer Diane Roark, the same morning.

The Edward Snowden Connection

Several months later the FBI raided the home of then still active NSA executive Thomas Andrews Drake who had also contacted DoD IG, but anonymously with confidentiality assured. The Assistant Inspector General, John Crane, in charge of the Whistleblower Program, suspecting his superiors provided confidential information to the United States Department of Justice (DOJ), challenged them, was eventually forced from his position, and subsequently himself became a public whistleblower. The punitive treatment of Binney, Drake, and the other whistleblowers also led Edward Snowden to go public with his revelations rather than report through the internal whistleblower program. (Above sections starting with ‘FBI Raid on William Binney’s Home’ copied from Wikipedia Binney Article)

Editor Russell Mokhiber of the Washington, D.C.-based weekly magazine also pointed out that so far, the Allard Prize committee “has a bias in favor of anti-corruption fighters in the Third World.”

Although founder Peter A. Allard has often spoken publicly about the problem of corruption in North America and the developed world, the awards committee are now “ten for ten focusing on corruption outside Western corporate countries” according to Mokhiber – who is correct.

Edward Snowden: Whistleblower? Traitor? Both?

Snowden is a controversial figure who causes long discussions and heated arguments among my own family and friends – so I speculate that his nomination might not have been the source of tranquility and agreement at meetings of the Allard Prize Committee and Advisory Board.

Interestingly, the journalist who broke the Snowden story, Glenn Greenwald, is giving the keynote speech at this year’s Allard Prize awards ceremony in Vancouver, BC on September 28, 2017.

But Snowden isn’t the core of Mokhiber’s story – which is that North American and European corporate crime and corruption doesn’t seem to have the attention of the Allard Prize Committee and Advisory Board. Mokhiber interviewed Allard Prize Executive Director Nicole Barrett, who talked about how much more difficult it is to confront corruption in the more sophisticated frameworks and in more developed countries.

Barrett speaks the truth as evidenced by my own case where corrupt lawyers from some of Canada’s largest law firms provably lied to the courts to convict and imprison me for Contempt of Civil Court. Yet… not one Canadian judge allowed me to cross-examine the very lawyer-witnesses whose evidence the court relied upon to convict and sentence me in absentia – without representation in a secret hearing that I was unaware of.

Not one Canadian judge listened to my secretly-made voice recordings that prove the lawyers deliberately lied to the court.

In my case the courts allowed an unethical, cowardly and corrupt legal profession to undermine our Canadian justice system and the rule of law.

So yes, Allard Prize Executive Director Nicole Barrett has a point; fighting corruption is in many ways much more difficult in developed countries.

Donald Best
Barrie, Ontario
Canada

Disclosure: I was a guest at the 2015 Allard Prize award ceremony, and will be attending the 2017 award ceremony as one of several videographers creating short documentaries about the Allard Prize and this year’s finalists.

In light of the recent and massive Panama Papers leak, attention is once more focused upon whistleblowers. When does exposing crime become a criminal act itself? What if government agencies and their employees don’t care about the law, and are in fact breaking the law? What are the limits of whistleblowing?

Twenty-five years ago, document leaks routinely involved a few dozen filefolders secretly copied over a few weeks on the office photocopier.

The nature of the leaks has changed. Today we are facing massive unauthorized releases of millions of pages. Innocent lives can be ruined. People can lose everything and even their lives under some conditions.

And yet, we are learning from the leaks that often the very agencies and people who are supposed to be upholding the rule of law and protecting citizens, are actively working to undermine our freedoms and rights and even commiting crimes for personal or other agendas.

Well worth your time to watch Ben Wizner at the Allard Prize forum, and to read the full article below at the Allard Prize website.

From the Allard Prize website:

Did Apple take on the FBI because of Snowden’s revelations?

On March 22, 2016, the Allard Prize and the Centre for Business Law hosted an open forum with Ben Wizner, Director of the Speech, Privacy and Technology Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in New York City and principal legal advisor to National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Wizner’s presentation challenged the claims that Edward Snowden’s act of conscience had been in vain, that others would be foolish to follow his example, and that the growing movement for reform would not succeed. Wizner argued, instead, that Snowden’s disclosures had actually strengthened the institutions that are supposed to serve as a check on the reach of the American national security state, specifically the courts, the U.S. legislative branches, and the media.